Q. I saw an article that mentioned Kingsoft Office as an alternative to
Microsoft Office. Is that program worthwhile and what does it cost?

A. It is worthwhile, and some say it is better than LibreOffice, the primary
free competition to Microsoft Office we discussed a month ago. This is a
timely question with Microsoft stating it will discontinue support for
Office 2003 in early April. One of the advantages of the Kingsoft Office
Suite is that its classic interface is very similar to the one used in
Microsoft Office 2003 making it an easy transition for someone accustomed to
the 2003 program. Kingsoft is a Chinese software company that offers a free
and a professional version of its Office Suite with the professional version
currently costing about $70. The free version is relatively complete and is
particularly good at transferring files to and from Microsoft Office 2003,
2007, 2010 and 2013. In fact, it is better than LibreOffice in handling
certain Microsoft formatting features like columns.

The Kingsoft suite includes the most commonly used office programs - a
writing program, a spreadsheet program and one to create presentations, and
each of these works well with files created by their Microsoft counterpart.
Kingsoft cannot open files created by LibreOffice unless those files were
saved in the RTF or Microsoft formats. It can create files in all the
Microsoft formats except 2013 as well as TXT, RTF, and HTML formats.

LibreOffice was created and is maintained by a large number of volunteer
software developers. That amount of support leads to more frequent updates
and added features than Microsoft or Kingsoft. Kingsoft is increasingly
recognized as the less technical free choice that allows easy sharing of
files with others using Microsoft Office. Many reviewers have started
recommending downloading each free alternative and testing which seems most
useful and/or comfortable for each user. For more information and to see the
specific differences between the free and professional versions, check the
Kingsoft website.

Published: Courier 3/16/14 - Page 3C

This article has been written by a PCS member and was published in "The Daily Courier"
of Prescott, Arizona on the date listed above. While current when
written, these articles may contain outdated information and you should
check with other sources prior to relying on the article's contents.